The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 25

Cccticn Ann Landers 2 Television 2 Comics 4 Cryptoquote 7 Living Editor Ellen Hale: 694-5070 Gannett NewspapersWednesday, December 10, 1997 JN TRENDS TT JJ Jl if CO CSO Hl The replica of the schooner Amistad, in an artist's rendering. -if 3 i 1 y. H.T.Ji 1 .1 "Ail JUj New interest a movie r- lit li I 2. i rtnriimnTnr7 and even a '--cf wWr- Jy replica in a story of slavery's brutality from America's past CourtesyMystic Seaport DEBORAH PORTERFIELD Goo-goo gigabyte Toddlers who are still in diapers are quickly becoming major consumers of computer software. "We have software out there for 18-month-old kids," said Ann Stephens, president of PC Data, a research firm in Reston, Va.

"I can't imagine what it is they're doing outside of spreading jelly on the keyboard." What they're doing is imitating mom and dad. A tot who watches i dad on the home computer inevitably will crawl on his lap to see what's going on. And because spread sheets don't pique the inter-; est of most 18-month-olds, parents eventually seek out "lapwear" that can be shared. Knowledge Adventure, maker of the popular JumpStart series, start-' ed the the baby trend when it intro- duced JumpStart Toddler in 1996. Other big names, including Sesame Street and Fisher-Price, soon fol-' lowed with more toddler programs.

I'That stuff really does sell," says Stephens. "They come out with I names like JumpStart. It really pushes the parents' buttons. They have the kids reading before they walk." In September, toddler and pre-' school titles dominated PC Data's top-10 selling education list. Sesame i Street Toddler Deluxe finished third, followed by Sesame Street Elmo's Preschool.

Reader Rabbit Preschool, Reader Rabbit Toddler, Ready to Read with Pooh and JumpStart Preschool also made the eut. So far this year, JumpStart Toddler has taken in more than $4 million, according to PC Data. Reader Rabbit Toddler, which debuted in June, has rung up sales of $1.8 million. And Sesame Street Toddler Deluxe, which came out in March, has taken in about $2 million. Most of these programs rely on familiar childhood games and songs: In Reader Rabbit Toddler, tots pop floating bubbles, sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and play peek-a-boo with dogs, cats and cows.

In Fisher-Price Discovery Farm, toddlers sing "Old McDonald Had a Farm," help baby animals find their mommies and feed the farm animals. 5 Bin JumpStart Toddler, children explore a playroom filled with instruments, singing animals, giggling letters and bouncing shapes. And in Sesame Street Toddlers Deluxe, children are encouraged to play with art, letters and numbers. Any of these games can be fun for parents and children to share. But the danger is that overly ambitious parents will use the programs to force-feed their toddlers academic skills.

More rational parents will, of course, treat the computer as an extension of their children's pretend play. It's developmental appropri-ate for a toddler to mimic mom with a play phone or dad with a toy broom, so why not also give him a turn on the family computer? But some parents may not be ready for the next step. Next spring, Knowledge Adventure plans to debut JumpStart Baby. The target 1 age most likely will start at six I months, when some babies are just J- starting to sit up. And that's more than Stephens can take.

What's next, she asks incredulously. "Wombwear?" If lllll HJim Milif inmnrHnrr TlHifii.li lift WHniWHl itm By Georgette Gouveia Staff Writer Amistad The very name has the perfume of the exotic, as if it signified some phantom figure or a far-off port of call. The reality is both less romantic and more richly ironic as realities often are. La Amistad was the name of a 19th-century SpanishCuban cargo schooner, site of a dramatic mutiny by a group of kidnapped Africans and subject of a highly publicized case that wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even so, Amistad has been a backwater of American history, a little-explored spot on the tortuous and torturous route of race relations in this country. "It's not a well-known story in American history," says composer Anthony Davis, whose opera "Amistad" premiered Nov. 29 at Lyric Opera of Chicago to mixed reviews but enthusiastic audiences. "Amistad didn't tell the kind of story of progression that they (historians) wanted to tell. "When you look back on history," he adds, "it's kind of a problem.

A lot of the story wasn't told." Until now. Amistad one of the greatest stories never told is about to become a household name. This week the subject explodes in the American consciousness as DreamWorks Pictures launches Steven Spielberg's "Amistad" a stirring, singing, soaring film that has "important Oscar-nominated blockbuster" written all over it. (Already Amistad has earned the ultimate accolade of the rich and famous a lawsuit. Barbara Chase-Riboud has filed a $10-mil-lion copyright infringement suit, charging that Spielberg plagiarized her novel "Echo of Lions" in making his movie, which opens today.

DreamWorks insists the film is based on William A. Owens' novel "Black Cinque (Djimon Hounsou, center) and his fellow captives stand trial for the rebellion aboard the slave ship Amistad. Slave, free, black, white The Spielberg Juggernaut is steering much of the interest in this subject, particularly the flotilla of Amistad books and TV documentaries. But there have always been pockets of Amistad activity, from an 1839 play to a current shipbuilding project at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn. Perhaps nowhere has the effort to tell the Amistad story been more concentrated than in Connecticut, site of the legal wranglings over the fate of the ship and its captives.

On Friday, Mystic Seaport one of the film's locations will unveil a handsome exhibit on Amistad and a burgeoning website of documents and curricula that is to date the equivalent of 1,000 pages of text. Then on March 8, Mystic Seaport and Amistad America a not-for-profit organization, will lay the keel (or spine) of the new Amistad, a $2.8 million, 77-foot hand-hewn vessel, scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2000. The sleek black schooner which will be made of cedar, mahogany, Douglas fir and yellow pine as well as live oak felled when Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989 will ply the nation's waterways as a voyaging classroom. "It will teach kids about leadership and cooperation," says Christopher R. Cloud, project manager for Amistad America.

"When you work on a ship, if all don't pull the same rope, the boat doesn't leave the dock. The educational aspect is also part of its legacy." From slave transport, Amistad has become what Mystic and Amistad America call a "freedom schooner." And that is as it should be, says Quentin Snediker, Amistad Project coordinator for Mystic Seaport: "Amistad is an icon for the struggle of human rights in this country." The story of the Amistad began early in 1839 aboard another ship, this one teeming with captive Please see AMISTAD, 3C By Marshall Fine Staff Writer "Who we are," intones a character in "Amistad," Steven Spielberg's stirring new film, "is who we were." Which is both an ennobling and a shameful thought, when you think about it. On the one hand, we were a nation of people who took liberty Amistad Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman. Directed by Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks, rated PG-13 (graphic violence, nudity).

Hl Uvl In Connecticut, a new old ship Amistad project coordinator Quentin Snediker, above, with the "live oak" logs that will be milled into timbers to build a replica of the Amistad at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Right, Snediker surveys blueprints for the schooner. seriously enough to make the rather drastic step of fighting a massive war to gain our freedom and create a democracy. Think of the consequences, had we-lost. On the other hand, we were a nation that, officially and unofficially, sanctioned slavery for more than its first 100 years of existence.

Only a war that nearly destroyed the country brought slavery to an end, a conflict whose ripples of Please see REVIEW, 3C 1 Deborah Porterfield covers trends and technology for this newspaper. Write her at Gannett Suburban Newspapers, 1 Gannett Drive, White Plains, N.Y. 10604. You can also reach her via e-mail at debpcyburban.com. Or call 694-5075.

Staff photosMichael DeChillo JACOBSON Langella's 'Cyrano' loses by a nose Frank Langella directs himself in his adaptation of "Cyrano de Bergerac." serapes and chauffeurs' caps. The concept, clearly, was to remove all extraneous production values so that Langella could shine the off-Broadway Laura Pels space of the Roundabout Theatre, is the grimmest "Cyrano" you'll ever see. Lovers of the play should be -li-1 vi By Jacques le Sourd Staff Writer It's an occupational hazard for a talented actor: The ego inflates. Then critical judgment evaporates and, worse, those who might check it are banished as the runaway ego takes control of everything around it with dire results. The latest victim of this syndrome: Frank Langella.

Not a mega-star but unencumbered. But it backfires: The ambient gloom swallows him up with everything else. The supporting players were REVIEW "Cyrano de Bergerac" warned to stay away, and those who have never seen it before could be traumatized by this experience. Rostand's classic play, Of NT" 'I it At in. 8-.

VNA I tf. now eminent enough to call the snots in any stage production in which he appears, Langella has chosen the title role of Edmond Rostand's century-old classic, "Cyrano de Bergerac." Dubious casting, to be sure Langella is hardly a romantic actor but it might have worked. Except that the actor chose to "adapt" rather than accept the definitive 1923 translation A A obviously cast for weakness so as not to upstage the star. Marcus Chait is a bland, unattractive Christian. Allison Mackie is a shopworn Roxane in dowdy costumes.

None of the other actors makes the slightest impression. The ego trip becomes downright laughable during Cyrano's death scene, in which all the other characters are plunged into total darkness as Langella glows in white light. The actor-director-adapter has even changed the last line to suit an egocentric reading of the play: It's no longer about his love for Roxane. It's about his love for himself. Tickets are $50 at the Roundabout, 1530 Broadway at 45th Street.

(1-212) 719-1300. which opened in Paris on Dec. s. 27, 1897, is set in the age of Louis XIV. American audiences may know "Cyrano" best through Steve Martin's sweet, modern-day interpretion in the 1987 movie "Roxanne." Cyrano stands for everyone who ever loved and wasn't loved back: He worships his beautiful cousin Roxane, but she loves the handsome dunce Christian.

Cyrano finds a way to express his love by composing Christian's poetic love letters. The tone of the Langella version is established by the drab scenery and costumes, which seem to set the play sometime after a nuclear holocaust. Instead of plumed hats, knee-breeches and high boots, Cyrano and his men wear brown leather tunics, double-knit trousers, wool of the play by Brian Hooker. And, even more fatally, he decided to direct him-self as well. The result, which opened last night in i "Uniforms? What about my individuality?".